9149 MEN Guide to Self Sufficinecy and Country Skills

40 40 Keep a Family Cow and

Enjoy Delicious Milk, Cream, Cheese, and More

Everything you need to know to buy, care for, and save money on dairy products and more.

44 Vertical Gardening

Techniques for Maximum Returns

Grow bigger, better, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, and cantaloupes with simple, but sturdy trellises.

48 Backyard Chicken Basics

They’re less work than house pets, provide great garden pest control, deliver nutritious eggs, and more fun than a tire swing.

What’s not to love?

52 Homegrown

Chicken Nutrition

You may easily be able to grow your own poultry feed. This expert advice helps you determine how to supplement your flocks nutrition and save money.

54 A History of Geese

as Guard Animals

Control weeds and unwelcome guests with a few feathered friends.

63

52 55 Haymaking Tools

For the Small Farm

These implements and tips make haymaking practical and economical, no matter your acreage.

58 Farm Fencing: Horse

High, Chicken Tight, and Bull Strong

When fencing livestock, there is much to consider. Here’s how to make the best choice for your homestead, and your animals.

63 Choose the Best

Wood For Burning

Consider these differing hardwoods for high BTU return and keep toasty this winter.

64 Lesson From

Off-Grid Living

Practical advice from a 20-year veteran homesteader helps you shift to a low-carbon lifestyle.

68 Pressure Canning Meat:

Master the Technique

Extend you self-reliance goals, and your budget, by learning how to safely can beef, chicken, and more.

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58 72 Delicious, Homemade

Whole-Grain Flours

Grinding your own grains at home opens up a world of baking possibilities and makes for a boredom-free kitchen.

77 Household Uses

For Lavender

Use your lavender harvest throughout your home for added stress-relief and disinfecting power.

78 Solar Heating Plan

For Any Home

If you can build a deck, you can build this super solar heating system, and save money as you lower your carbon footprint.

84 9 Multipurpose Garden

Companions

These resilient, double-duty plants support your garden and provide food and medicinal perks for your home and family.

90 How to Make – and Use!

– Homemade Vinegar

Get creative and enhance almost any recipe with flavor-packed vinegars made from red wine, white wine, apple cider, and beer.

72

92 92 Farming Lavender

Consider the experience of this accomplished grower and cultivate, even sell, your own heavenly scented lavender.

96 Medicinal Herbs for Difficult

Growing Conditions

Pick the medicinal plants that will thrive in shady, swampy, or dry environments.

100 Buy the Best Olive Oil

Learn how to identify healthful, high-quality oils, plus how to best cook with them.

104 Easy Ways to

Preserve Fresh Food

Expert advice, and helpful charts, show you which produce to freeze, dehydrate, can, or put into cool storage for the tastiest results.

110 Good Vibrations With

Herbal Libations

Try these infused beverages any season and make use of your herbal know-how!

114 Yarn Farming

Sheep, alpaca, and llama wool can bring a tidy sum to the small farm without the fuss of breeding.

128

100 118 Best Staple Crops

for Building Food Self-Sufficiency

These 10 space-efficient, calorierich, staple crops give high yields and store easily to boost food security and save money.

124 Craft These Fresh

Easy Cheeses

Make several pounds of cheese from these easy-to-follow directions including basic supplies, tools, and resources to continue your new dairy dalliance.

126 Back to Basics:

Make Your Own Shampoo, Deodorant, and Toothpaste

Avoid potentially dangerous ingredient hidden in many commercial body products by whipping up the three homemade basics.

128 Prune For Small-

Space Fruit Trees

Never settle for an apple you don’t adore or a peach you can’t reach! Revolutionary pruning allows you to grow any type or variety of fruit in small spaces with these techniques.

144

110 133 Grow Free Fruit Trees

Imagine, your own peaches, nectarines, and apricots from seed for free! Follow these howto guidelines.

138 Raise Sheep: Low-

Maintenance Livestock

Sheep can provide homegrown pastured meat with a powerful nutrient profile, they require less space than most livestock, and offer other income benefits.

144 How to Raise Honeybees

If the draw of fresh honey has given you bees on the brain, learn how to raise honeybees for excitement and sweetness for years to come.

152 Wintering Herbs Indoors

Bring your favorite herbs inside for winter care and pring renewal.

As herbs winter over, continue to enjoy fresh flavor throughout the cool season.

156 How to Build a

Grain bin House

Create a unique backyard retreat, storage shed, or an efficient metal structure for a new home with a used or new farm grain silo.

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TOP TOOLS

for a Half-Acre Homestead DIY veteran Lloyd Kahn recommends the tools and tactics that have kept his homestead humming for 40 years.

By Lloyd Kahn

S

ummon the word “homestead” and you will likely imagine hardy farmers with 10 or more acres on which they keep livestock, grow and preserve a great deal of their own food, and fell trees to build their homes. But more modest-sized homesteads are more attainable for most people, and these smaller-scale acreages can embody oldschool homesteading in principle, if not in scope. Our small homestead is one of those.

For the past 40 years, my wife, Lesley, and I have lived in a house we built ourselves, and we grow a lot of our own

food on our half-acre of land. We began homesteading in the ’60s and ’70s, when the countercultural revolution was sweeping across the United States.

The ’60s meant many different things to many people, and my focus was on food and shelter. By building our own house, we could escape rent and a mortgage.

In 1971, we bought our half-acre of land for $6,500 in a small town in Northern California. I built our current home (below) with used lumber from torn-down

Navy barracks. I salvaged the windows from chicken coops in a nearby town and picked up the doors from debris boxes outside remodeling projects in San Francisco. I covered the exterior walls with shakes I split from redwood logs that had washed up on a nearby beach. While

building, we planted fruit trees and a large vegetable garden, and got chickens, bees, and goats.

Between then and now, our halfacre homestead has gone through continuous changes. I learned long ago that you probably can’t become fully self-sufficient, but you can work meaningfully toward greater selfsufficiency. You can grow as much of your own food and do as much of your own building as possible without fixating on doing it all. After four decades of embracing this mindset, I’ve

discovered that you’ll certainly get much further down the road to self-reliance if you have the right high-quality tools for the tasks that will arise along the way.

Following are some of the tools and techniques that have made Lesley’s and my 40-year journey toward greater selfsufficiency successful. As comic book character Mr. Natural said, “Get the right tool for the job!”

Build the Basics Chicken coop. I built about five makeshift coops and lost quite a few

hens to predators before deciding to construct a proper coop (see Page 6).

We poured a concrete slab, put up conventional walls, and protected the yard with aviary wire, which we sank about 18 inches into the ground all the way around. The new coop has successfully kept out hawks, rats, and digging critters, such as raccoons. It also has a living roof.

Greenhouse. Its north wall is made of stabilized

Redwood shakes sheathe the exterior of Lloyd’s home, and fiberglass on the roof forms inexpensive skylights.

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was produced. They evolve in response to their surroundings more than we realize.

These adaptations are based on obvious factors, such as climate, but also on cultural factors, such as whether the seeds were given a diet of chemical fertilizers.

As a result, packets from 10 different seed companies may list the same variety name on their covers, but what’s inside wasn’t necessarily created equal. A ‘Brandywine’ tomato isn’t a ‘Brandywine’ isn’t a ‘Brandywine.’

When seed shopping, therefore, your most important question should be, “Will this living thing feel at home in my garden?” Meaning: “What’s this particular seed adapted to?” But you can’t know that unless you know the original source of the seed, which, surprisingly, is often not its seller. Many companies are actually resellers and not plant breeders or even seed farmers. You need to know who bred the seed, as well as where and how.

‘Sugar Magnolia’ snap peas

Open-Pollinated Seed

HIGH-QUALITY GARDEN SEEDS

Some companies deliver better-quality seeds than others.

Get tips on where and how to shop for seeds, and learn about the pros and cons of heirloom, hybrid, and open-pollinated varieties.

By Margaret Roach

A

fter growing my own vegetables organically for 25 years, I recently hit a run of more than my usual share of garden flops. Were the crop failures my fault, or could I blame the weather?

Had I been choosing the wrong seeds?

I decided to investigate by interviewing multiple seed experts for my website (www.awaytogarden.com), which led me down a path full of surprising discoveries.

I’ve come to see, in a new light, that every successful and resilient garden starts with high-quality seeds that are matched to the garden’s growing conditions.

34 THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS COLLECTOR SERIES • SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND COUNTRY SKILLS

Seeds Are Alive Think about it: How many other consumer sectors deliver living embryos by mail, or set them out on an in-store rack? Seeds are alive and they adapt, meaning they’re greatly influenced by the environment in which they were originally bred and the way each generation of seeds

SHELLEY STONEBROOK; TOP: HUDSON VALLEY SEED LIBRARY; PAGE 34: MARGARET ROACH/AWAYTOGARDEN.COM

Sourcing Truly

With open-pollinated (OP) varieties, including heirlooms, careful seed sourcing is especially critical. Many gardeners like to save seed year to year, so they choose openpollinated varieties that allow for that. An OP is “a living, breathing organism that, unlike a hybrid, is meant to evolve over time,” says Micaela Colley, executive director of Organic Seed Alliance (OSA), which fosters ethical seed stewardship and the revival of regional breeding.

As long as pollen isn’t shared between different varieties within the same species, the resulting open-pollinated seed will remain true to type and will produce a next generation that looks mostly like its parent plant.

That’s not the case with hybrid varieties, which are created through deliberate crosses between two genetically distinct, homozygous (highly inbred) parents.

This hybridization results in uniform plants with sought-after traits — disease resistance, for example. A hybrid plant’s seeds will not grow true to type, but will instead produce a next generation that expresses an unpredictable range of traits.

That means, with hybrids, customers must purchase new seed annually (again, because

The best seeds come from careful breeding projects, such as this tomato project underway at the Hudson Valley Seed Library in New York (above).

Get off to a strong start by filling your seed box with varieties bred for your region and for organic growing systems (right).

the plants’ offspring won’t resemble its parents). In about 1950, hybrids became popular with farmers, in part because of their uniformity. Imagine discovering, for the first time, commercially convenient, cost-saving traits, such as a field of onions or broccoli all ready for harvest at once. These desirable traits were quickly adopted, allowing for ever-bigger monocultures.

Open-pollinated seeds, by comparison, are loaded with potential variability and diversity, because their seed is produced by pollen flowing freely between all the genetically similar parents (as opposed to deliberate crosses, as in the production of hybrids). Thus, producing quality OP seed requires diligent management of each year’s seed crop: roguing out

weaklings and individuals that veer off course, while also selecting for plants that show improved vigor or disease resistance.

According to expert breeder and OSA co-founder John Navazio, who is now manager of plant breeding at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, if you don’t maintain OPs year in and year out, reselect for the type you like, and get rid of the plants that are obviously not adapted to your growing system, then the varieties will slowly peter out through genetic drift.

That petering out is just what has happened to OPs in general, because the seed industry followed the hybrid money instead. It’s also likely why, at harvest time, some of my recent garden failures (and perhaps yours) bore no resemblance to their catalog photos or descriptions. www.MotherEarthNews.com

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Backyard

have each other, and you won’t have to introduce a new member to the flock, which causes the hens a bit of stress as they establish a pecking order. Three hens could give you about 500 to 700 eggs during their first year of production (they start laying eggs when they’re about 5 months old), but that number will decline about 20 percent or more each year.

CHICKEN BASICS

Staging a Coop

By Jenna Woginrich

C

hickens provide good food and good laughs. They’re quirky, beautiful, and clever. They come in countless colors, shapes, and varieties, and there’s hardly a culture on the planet that doesn’t raise them. Keeping chickens will teach you basic livestock handling, and these hardy birds will amaze you with their individual character traits. They eat ticks, grasshoppers, and lots of other pests.

More good news: Raising chickens won’t break the bank.

A handful of chicks will cost less than a large pizza and they’ll require less effort than a house cat.

Another great reason for keeping chickens is the quality of free-range eggs. No more watery whites or pale yolks. You are in for the richness of a country hen’s eggs — eggs proven to be lower in cholesterol, higher in several vitamins, and omega-3 fatty acids, keeping you and yours healthier.

But what’s my absolute favorite reason to raise backyard chickens? They add life and vigor to a home, turning houses into homesteads, and people (children and adults alike) into naturalists. They connect us to our food and to our past.

Trust me: It’s a better life that comes with morning clucks.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to live down a country road to keep chickens. What you do need is a little bit of space, some research, and a city ordinance that allows

laying hens. Before you begin your adventure with backyard chickens, you’ll need to plan for a few of their basic needs, such as housing, predator protection, and supplies.

There’s a Chicken Breed for Everyone When choosing your hens, knowing a little about the history and characteristics of the breeds you’re considering will be helpful. Some birds thrive outdoors and require little feed if they can scavenge on their own. Some can lay like champs in close quarters while others need plenty of freerange space to spread their wings. As for temperament, some are major characters while others are calm and gentle.

On the flip side, giant, corn-chowing hybrid meat birds (usually called “broilers”) should never be considered for laying stock because most won’t survive much longer than a few weeks after they reach slaughter weight.

Consider your preferences for the color of the hens and the color of the eggs they lay. All these factors should influence your decision of which chickens are right for you and your home, so do your homework beforehand — you’ll find it fun and valuable.

You shouldn’t have just one chicken. These social birds need the company of at least one other hen to be content.

It’s best to have a minimum of three total. If one doesn’t survive for any reason, the remaining two hens will still

48 THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS COLLECTOR SERIES • SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND COUNTRY SKILLS

CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT: FOTOLIA/MAYA KRUCHANCOVA; DUSTY BOOTS PHOTOGRAPHY; LAURA BERMAN/GREENFUSE PHOTOS

They’re less work than house pets and more fun than a tire swing.

Plus, they provide delicious, nutritious eggs.

By the time your chicks start resembling miniature chickens instead of those round balls of fluff you carried home, you should set up Chickens love to hunt for worms and bugs in freshly turned soil. their permanent outdoor housing.

It can be humble or lavish, as long as it’s functional. The first coop, the Chick-n-Hutch, cost less than $200 (with coop will be their safe haven — shelter from storms as well shipping), and I assembled it on my back deck with only as from claws and jaws. (See our improved plan for a secure, a screwdriver in 20 minutes. It made it through an Idaho low-cost, portable DIY coop online at bit.ly/2oNzrAY.) winter and — covered with an old wool army blanket at The number of chicks you have, your housing situation, night — sheltered my hens from predators, wind, and rain. and your budget will all factor into your backyard chicken Foxes, Hawks, and setup. If you’re renting a brownstone with a fenced backyard, Coyotes — Oh, My! for example, you could get away with nothing fancier than a converted doghouse you score off Freecycle (www.freecycle.

You’ll also have to protect your birds from weasels, org) or Craigslist (www.craigslist.org). If you own a half-acre bobcats, fishers, owls, raccoons, and various stray dogs in suburbia, you can buy building plans for a coop that will and cats. (That’s not an exhaustive list.) These critters are suit your birds’ needs perfectly all out there, crouching in the or order a prefab chicken spa hedgerows, smacking their lips, complete with nesting boxes and scanning for a fresh chicken and watering stations. Don’t dinner. It’s your job as the limit your options — be guardian of the flock to keep creative! your chickens safe so they can If you’re comfortable around keep producing eggs for years a circular saw and want to to come. call out your inner artist, you If you live in a city, you may can literally build a future spa think you won’t have to worry for your girls. Even if your about predators — especially the carpentry skills are limited, larger ones, such as coyotes — you could still build a simple harming your flock. But whether coop. Chances are a cheap, old your backyard chicken setup is shed or a dog run — or even urban, suburban, or rural, it will a used coop — is available in attract animals wanting to steal a your local paper, pennysaver, or meal from your egg factory.

No hen is ever really off the the Craigslist Farm and Garden radar, but that doesn’t mean pages. Borrow a friend’s pickup “keeping chickens” is a synonym or rent a U-Haul for the day for “homeland security.” You can and go get it. take various basic precautions, You could also buy a new with different options for basic coop. If you’re dealing different needs. with fewer than five birds, you Chickens relish odd “treats” that might otherwise be compost There are daytime predators have quite a few affordable or garbage: stale bread, vegetable peelings, and more.

— hawks and dogs — that can options. My praiseworthy www.MotherEarthNews.com

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FARM FENCING

or try to climb it. Conversely, a fence created with a single strand of lightweight polywire conductor offers little in the way of a physical barrier, but it will serve as a psychological barrier after your animals have been shocked by it. The best fences integrate both physical and psychological barriers as components.

Horse High, Chicken Tight, and Bull Strong

by Oscar H. Will III

G

ood farm fencing surely makes good neighbors, and with the right livestock fences, you and your critters will experience the joys of low-stress livestock management. A one-size-fits-all solution to livestock fencing doesn’t exist — you’ll need different kinds of fences for different purposes.

Fences work in two basic ways: physical and psychological.

A 12-foot-tall stone wall in good repair will keep most animals in or out no matter how much they rub, scratch,

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELAYNE SEARS

With livestock fencing, there’s plenty to consider: Woven wire or hightensile? Electric or non-electric?

Here’s how to make the best choice for your animals.

Wire Fencing Basics Steel wire continues to be among the most economical materials from which to construct fences. Smooth steel wire is most often used to manufacture barbed wire or woven wire fence.

Wire fences rely on braced end posts and line posts installed between them to support the wire. Posts can be made of wood, steel, plastic, or fiberglass.

Typical installations include braced 7- to 8-inch-diameter wood end posts with steel T-posts in between. Steel posts are easy to drive by hand, while wood posts generally require

You’ll likely need to combine several fencing types to corral different animals.

you to dig post holes and tamp soil around each post.

Low-tensile (conventional) steel wire with a low carbon content is still used to construct most wire fences. This material bends and stretches easily, but is relatively inelastic — so if it stretches, it doesn’t contract back to its original state. These characteristics mean that it’s easy to work with, but also subject to sagging and breakage. Conventional wire requires more line posts spaced closer together for support than high-tensile wire.

High-tensile wire is more difficult to work with, but fences made of it stay tighter longer because the wire is stronger and more elastic. Working with high-tensile wire also requires greater care with setting end posts and braces

Build the Shed and Collector Solar Collectors

The tank is large enough to hold about one sunny day’s worth of collected sunshine. On a sunny day, the tank can hold enough energy to heat the house through the night, and through part of the next day if it’s cloudy. A general rule is to have about 11⁄2 to 2 gallons of water storage per square foot of collector.

The waterline of the tank must be several inches below the lower manifold of the collectors to The water storage tank is constructed with plywood and a pond liner made of EPDM rubber. allow the collectors to fully drain back into the tank. In our case, the 3-foot-high tank is sunk into the extends across the top of the tank at ground about 2 feet so the collectors the midpoint of the long walls, and ties could be mounted just over a foot above the top of the long walls together. This the bottom of the south wall. tension tie is necessary to keep the long We chose to build a plywood tank walls of the tank from failing because of with a rubber pond liner insert (ethylene outward water pressure. propylene diene monomer, or EPDM The tank construction is important; rubber). The tank bottom and walls are it will be holding about 4,000 pounds 3 ⁄4-inch exterior plywood. The plywood of water! All joints should be carefully is supported by a 2-by-4 frame around glued and screwed together. The tank the base of the walls, and a second 2-bymust sit on a level and solid surface. We 4 frame around the top of the walls. A placed the tank on about 3 inches of single 2-by-4 vertical stiffener is used in washed gravel, which had been leveled the center of the long walls. A beveled and tamped. vertical 2-by-3 is used in each corner When the tank plywood shell is of the tank to tie the end walls and complete, cut a piece of EPDM pond side walls together. A metal tension tie lining material large enough to line the

Radiant Flooring

Trench Water Line OUT Water Line IN

Water Tank

remaining open ends of each manifold are capped. Test the manifold for leaks.

We included vents in each collector bay to reduce the likelihood of the collector overheating when no water is flowing through it. The vents consist of high and low openings in the back wall of each collector bay.

Air from the shed enters the lower vent, flows through the collector and exits the upper vent. This airflow helps cool the collectors. The upper openings have doors to control airflow. (For a similar design concept, see “Build a Simple Solar Heater,” bit. ly/2BGpcaT.)

Install the horizontal glazing supports in the previously cut notches. These notches are located just behind the glazing panels for support and in order to prevent buckling. We used electrical metallic tubing (EMT) conduit for the supports.

Install the glazing panels. We used 4-by-12-foot twin-wall polycarbonate glazing panels and secured them with 1-by-2-inch vertical strips screwed to the collector frame. These cap strips are ripped from composite deck boards, which are likely to last longer than ordinary wood strips. We used stainless steel screws to prevent rust stains.

We decided against applying caulk or glazing tape between the glazing panels and the collector frame. This has worked fine, with no leaks — plus, it will make removing the glazing panels much easier.

Twin Wall Polycarbonate

Cap Strip

Absorber Plate Risers

2x4 Frame Stud

1” Polyisocyanurate Insulation

2x6 Shed Stud (24” O.C.)

1/2” Sheathing

Collector Cross-Section

80 THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS COLLECTOR SERIES • SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND COUNTRY SKILLS

Top View

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: LEN CHURCHILL (2); GARY REYSA (2); PAGE 78, GARY REYSA

The south wall of our shed is conventional 2-by-6 stud construction with 1⁄2-inch plywood sheathing. There is no siding on the south side, and the sheathing also serves as the back wall of the collector. The collector framework is laid out right over the south wall sheathing. It’s best to lay out the full collector frame on a flat surface so you can make sure everything fits, and then gang-cut the notches in the frame for the absorber manifolds and the horizontal glazing supports.

When cutting the manifold support notches in the framework, be sure to allow for the fact that the absorber manifolds must slope and that the lowest corner of the absorber panels must be several inches above the tank water level for drainage.

Install the collector frame on the south wall sheathing. Use lag bolts with the heads in counter bores to make them flush with the front of the frame. Caulk all the outside edges to prevent air leaks. The front surface of the frame is the surface on which the glazing panels will be mounted, so make sure it’s smooth.

Install polyisocyanurate insulation in each collector bay. Nail it to the sheathing with large-head nails. Do not use polystyrene insulation inside the collector — it will melt.

Drill a half-inch drain hole in the bottom board of each collector bay so that any water that might get in can escape.

Trim the ends of the absorber manifold pipes so they will fit together when installed in the frame, then place the absorber plates into the notches in the frame. We soldered the manifolds together using ordinary, copper solder couplings.

The supply line from the tank pump is hooked to the bottom manifold at the lower end. The return line is hooked to the top manifold at the higher end. The

The Storage Tank

entire tank with no seams. Lay the liner over the top of the tank and carefully work it down into the tank. After the liner touches the bottom of the tank, take off your shoes and work from inside the tank. Continue working the liner into the tank until it’s against the walls. Work all the extra material in each corner into a single, neat fold. Then, secure the liner to the top frame with silicone caulk, held in place with staples, and trim off the excess.

The tank lid is made from two layers of 2-inch-thick rigid foam board glued to a sheet of hard board.

The bottom is covered with EPDM. The lid must be firmly held to the tank to prevent water vapor from escaping.

We used lag screws.

Be sure to mount the pump and controller where they are protected from low temperatures. We did this by positioning both in a compartment close to the storage tank, with most of the tank’s insulation detouring around the outside of it so the compartment is kept warm by heat from the tank.

Most of the pipes coming into the tank go over the top edge and then down into the tank. This eliminates penetrating the EPDM liner and reduces the potential

Light reflected off snow will increase the effectiveness of the collectors. To avoid snow accumulation on the collectors, make them vertical (instead of tilted), and add an overhang to the shed. www.MotherEarthNews.com

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